"In the 1980s, while conducting research at a courthouse in Louisiana, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall discovered a book written by 18th-century notaries that meticulously recorded details about hundreds of enslaved individuals: their names, where they came from, their skills, even their inclination toward rebelliousness.

"As Hall told the New York Times’ David Firestone in 2000, she was 'astounded'; English colonists rarely documented such information about the individuals who were brought from Africa to toil as enslaved laborers in America. Most scholars had assumed that details about their identities were simply lost to the passage of time.

"Hall, a scholar of Caribbean and African-Latin history, subsequently began a years-long investigation of neglected archives in Louisiana, France and Spain, where she found similarly revelatory records about enslaved individuals in colonial-era Louisiana. With the help of five assistants, she compiled that information into the “Louisiana Slave Database and Louisiana Free Database 1719-1820,” a revolutionary digital compendium that included searchable information about some 107,000 individuals.

Hall died on August 29, at the age of 93, reports the New York Times’ Clay Risen. She leaves behind an indelible legacy on both scholarly understanding and public perception of America’s colonial past. As Steven Mintz, a historian at the University of Texas, said on her 90th birthday in 2019, Hall was 'someone who has utterly transformed our understanding and restored the voices, lives and agency of those who made our world.'” - Bridgit Katz

Article: Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Whose Database Identified Thousands of Enslaved Laborers, Has Died at 93